Check-out delay
by Izumi1909
Summary: When a hotel has only one check-out counter and some of its customers don't want to be seen leaving it by others.


**Note:** This one is the comment section's fault. That and the fact that neither "Broken Bridges" nor "True Ruler" are going anywhere right now.

 **Check-out delay**

This hotel offered a very specific service, so neither of them could try lying about what they were doing here. Mikkel ended up being the one to speak:  
-How about Sigrun and I leave first, and the two of you wait a little to leave. If you end up catching up with us before we reach the carriage station, we can all pretend we ran into each other on the way back.  
Emil didn't exactly like the plan, but couldn't think of anything better. He thought that the level of embarrassment was staying surprisingly tolerable until Mikkel insisted upon pressing a couple of pamphlets in both his hands and Lalli's before leaving. In the meantime, Sigrun spoke out of nowhere:  
-How about you give that 200 you now owe me before we leave, big guy?  
Mikkel answered:  
-I do not think it is wise to settle a bet while still physically in this establishment. Or anywhere in its vicinity, for that matter. It may give onlookers the wrong idea about the reason we came here.  
-Good point. Let's do this at the carriage station. Or maybe on the way there, I don't think I want to be the one telling these two's relatives exactly which bet we are exchanging money over.  
Sigrun and Mikkel left. Lalli started walking towards the door, but Emil stopped him:  
-We are going to pretend we didn't see them here and they are going to do the same for us. It will be easier to make the others believe it if we wait a little before leaving.  
-Okay.  
Lalli went to sit on an empty chair in the building's entrance and opened of the pamphlets Mikkel had given him. Emil opened his own, noticed that everything was translated in all five languages, and decided that the time it would take for them to read all the way through both would make a good delay before their departure. Once Lalli was done, Emil asked him if there was anything he wanted to ask him about. Lalli shook his head.  
-I think it's okay to leave, then.

Siv sighed as she and Torbjörn were finally able to go to the check-out counter:  
-I thought they would never leave.  
As soon as the keys were officially given back to the hotel, she realized that she and Torbjörn should probably wait a little, to reduce the chances of Emil and Lalli seeing them leave the hotel and realizing they had been there all along. Torbjörn approved of the idea, but that left both of them with even less of a reason to wait for a later time to discuss the reason of their delay. Torbjörn was the first to spell things out:  
-So… Emil was just here… with Lalli.  
The "with Lalli" part felt like it should really be three different statements. Emil was old enough that at least the rational part of their brains shouldn't be too surprised to see him in such an establishment. Him being there with another man was unlikely on a purely statistical level, but nothing to comment on otherwise. Emil being in this hotel with a night scout that Siv clearly had seen _hissing_ at her children at some point raised more questions than she thought he could answer. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to read the situation. Was it a sign that Emil had grown less picky about at least one aspect of his life? Or was it sign that he was holding onto his sense of entitlement on that very same aspect? She asked Torbjörn what he thought of it:  
-Honestly, we won't know the whole story unless we ask him. And right now, asking him may be a little hard without admitting that we saw the two of them here. We should a least wait until we can ask him for another reason. If there is something long-term behind this, it will be a little harder for to Emil hide it once we will all be crammed into whichever number of rooms this farm has.  
-And what do we do if…  
Siv suddenly remembered that at her old job, samples always failed, but the exact way in which they failed wasn't known until the results came in. Their next lead for a new sample usually came from those results one way or another. Right now, she and Torbjörn knew there was something between Emil and Lalli, but they didn't know the exact nature of that "something" yet. They were going to need an actual answer before they started figuring out what to do about it. By the time she had finished sharing those thoughts with Torbjörn, a sufficient amount of time had passed since the departure of the two young men, so they left the hotel as well.

Árni couldn't believe how long it had taken for the Swedish couple to leave. He and Sigriður ran to the check-out counter to return their keys, then realized it would be a good idea to give the Swedish couple a slight lead after having gone through such trouble hiding from them. He gave the clock over the check-out counter a quick glance, and decided they could stay a few minutes and still make it in time to catch the carriage. Sigriður already had something to talk about in mind:  
-We need to get Reynir married. It will be easier now that we know he has magic.  
Árni had suggested they do this a good couple years ago, but Sigriður hadn't wanted to hear any of it and refused the idea of "handing her baby over to some other woman". He was quite sure she was only considering it now because Reynir's "little escapade" had made marriage the lesser of several possible evils. He quickly found a question to ask her:  
-Do you have anyone in particular in mind yet?  
-Not really, and I may have foolishly driven some of our neighbors away a couple years ago… I know! Forget the neighbors! That school probably has plenty of eligible young women studying in it. We could have two mages in the family instead of one!  
-You do realize it will entail letting him go at the school long enough and a regular enough basis for him to become friends with someone, right?  
-It's still better than having him in the Silent World with a bunch of strangers crazy enough to go there in the first place. But you're right. We'll need to make sure someone is keeping an eye on him so he doesn't run off again.  
-I'm quite sure he'll avoid doing this on his own after having spent a couple of months in the Silent World.  
- _Or_ , it will make visiting some Norwegian settlement look safe by comparison. What if he meets someone _there_ and moves in with _them_? We'll talk to the teachers whenever we go get him enrolled. And one last thing. Let's keep Bjarni out of this. I wouldn't put it beyond him to ruin everything after telling Reynir about the travel ban being lifted out of nowhere.  
-This may be a little too much, dear. How about we go meet him at the station and actually ask him what he wants to do in the near future before we get him put under state surveillance?  
Sigriður first looked taken aback, but eventually let out a resigned grumble.  
-You have a point. Let's go right now.

The two of them rushed to the counter to give their room key back. Onni sighed, both at the mixed feelings the conversation he had just overheard gave him and at the fact that is was probably way too late to get to the carriage station before anyone else noticed that he had given into the temptation to have a quick walk around the neighborhood. On that matter, it was probably best that he and Bjarni split up and return to the carriage station from separate streets. Not only to avoid getting asked too many questions, but to give each other a little time to think. Onni needed to figure out how to address the fact that he had just seen Lalli leave this very hotel. And as sympathetic as Onni was with their parents on some aspects of the situation, Bjarni was the one who actually was Reynir's older brother and the one who had any idea whether Reynir would be comfortable with what they had in store for him or not. And some of the things their mother was considering were going too far, even by Onni's own standards. Back home, the main reason Tuuri hadn't been able to visit other places before they had moved to Keuruu had been the lack of safety between settlements. Bjarni had just been telling him that Reynir hadn't been outside of their hometown before the trip that had gotten him stranded in the Silent World in spite of how safe it was to travel between settlements in Iceland.

Reynir started getting worried by the lack of familiar faces waiting at the carriage station besides himself. Both his parents and Bjarni had needed to go do "some boring errand" before going to the carriage station and told him to go wait for him there. He really wondered what everyone else was doing.


End file.
